Category Archives: Uncategorized

Architectural Reconstruction Project-Our assignment for this week was a recreate a historic neighborhood using a historic map overlaid on a Google Earth map. We were then to recreate some of the buildings in this neighborhood using Google Sketch-Up. I’ve spent the better part of a decade in one particular neighborhood, the Washington Navy Yard, our nation’s oldest shore establishment. I was particularly interested about some of the buildings in portraits done of the Yard in 1861 and 1862 and some early photographs taken at the same time.
This dry dock is no longer in existence, and the facade of the Commandant’s Office has changed drastically in 150 years. I found an 1858 map of the Navy Yard in the Habs-Haer website gave a footprint for both of these buildings, so I decided to try and recreate them in a attempt to help tell the early maritime history of the Washington Navy Yard.
This is hard to do as its been a “paperwork base” since the end of World War II. As there are no three-masted ships that sail in to the Navy Yard to rigging work any longer, visitors to the base have a hard time picturing its rich maritime history. Every fall I conduct two candlelight tours of the Washington Navy Yard, trying to impress upon the folks that attend that the Yard as once the site of a great deal of maritime traffic. As the large buildings that were constructed to cater to the needs of these ships are no longer at the Yard, I have a difficult time getting this concept across to people.

The Washington Navy Yard-Early History-The Washington Navy Yard was established somewhere around 1803 on a tract of land on the Eastern Branch river in Southeast DC. Our founding fathers, suspicious of a large standing military force, approved the tract of land (initially set aside for a future Navy Yard by George Washington in 1798) because could be built and maintained under the watchful eye of Congress, located just north on Capital Hill. The first commandant of the Navy Yard, a distinguished naval officer during the American Revolution, thought the site was perfect for the country’s first shore establishment as it lay near abundant supplies of timber and possessed a suitable waterfront from which to participate in the growing maritime trade in the United States.

The Drydock-Shipbuilding at the Washington Navy Yard in the 1800’s-Tingey remained the Commandant of the Navy Yard until after the War of 1812, and oversaw must of the construction on the initial building on the base. Ironically, he gave the order to burn those buildings down when the British invaded Washington DC in 1814. He passed his love the the Yard, it’s employees and the fledgling United States Navy down to future Commandants, who oversaw much of the Navy Yard’s construction, a great deal of which took place between 1815 and 1860. During this time a dry dock was built at the Yard, along with several large cannon forges and carpentry ships, all meant to help outfit the biggest ships of the American fleet. Ships like Constitution and Constellation had their mast work and rigging replaced at the Yard and smaller warships, like sloops and gunboats were constructed along the waterfront. It’s hard for today’s visitor’s to the Washington Navy Yard to imagine the dry dock sitting on the waterfront.
Nothing remains of it, except the winch house, which controlled the pulley system that hoisted the ships into the building. The dock must have been built over the slip that now hold the CNO’s barge. This slip would have been a great deal larger in 1858. The drydock was destroyed in 1900 or 1901, which makes since. With a more modern facilities for drydocking were needed for a more modern fleet. Larger ships would have increasing difficulty navigating the shallow waters of the Anacostia too. During this time Western European powers were also developing top notch facilities to develop and test new hull designs for warships. Determined to keep the pace with the rest of the industrialized world, plans were developed to build an experimental model basin at the Washington Navy Yard. The Waterfront of the Navy Yard was also expanding. In 1858 the drydock was the most eastern point on the Yard. Today it extends three blocks further. There was no room for obsolete workshops.

The Commandant’s Office (Building 1)-In 1836 the Commandant’s office was built in the center of the Washington Navy Yard. Built in brick in a Flemish bond style, this small structure was situated in the middle of the hub of activity of the Navy Yard so whichever Commandant was running the Yard at the time would have full view of the major projects being worked on. While the structure looks like the house, it was never used as a home except by one Commandant, John Dalghren.John Dalghren was made Commandant of the Washington Navy Yard in the 1850’s and remained at the post almost until the end of the Civil War. Many historians believe that he was Lincoln’s most trusted military adviser, and that the President was visiting his friend the afternoon of the day that he was assassinated. Dalghren is known as the “father of naval ordinance,” and he loved being the first to test the latest weapon being developed at the Navy Yard. He practically live in his office, and it was no hardship for him to give up the Commandant’s house, located just to the Northeast of his office on the Yard when housing for military officers in Washington was at a shortage during the Civil War.Today the Commandant’s office is on the National Register of Historic Buildings. It underwent a major renovation about three years ago to try and repair years of the neglect. The architects working on the project were required to leave the brick structure intact and return the building to as close to what it looked like before the renovation began, albeit more structurally sound. You’ll notice in the portrait of the Yard done in 1862 that there were no porches around the building. Those were added in the early 20th century. Somewhere along that time too the bottom floor of the building became the basement level and the second floor became the ground floor. Quite a bit of construction work was being completed at the Navy Yard at this time, including the building of the breech mechanism shop of the naval gun factory to the left of the building (if standing with your back to the river.) A rail line was also built through the center of the Yard for the transport of large objects. Although I couldn’t find any conclusive documentation about the change of the building, on can assume the layout of the land was changing as these projects were taken on.

The Reconstruction-

I know it doesn’t look like much, but this is the product of approx. 30 hours of work. Google Sketch-Up is not quite as intuitive as you’d think something that free for public download would be. I was telling a friend today that I probably would have had an easier time with the program if it was a little less like Auto-Cad and a little more like Photoshop, maybe even illustrator. I chose to leave the reconstruction sitting on the Habs-Haer map, which is overlaid on the Google Earth map. I thought this would allow some of the methods I used to complete this project better. I set out to trying to make sure I had the right measurements for the building. I have some of the measurements from the map, and some of the portraits of the Yard at this time. When I started creating the buildings using the measurements though, I found it wasn’t syncing with the map. I know the map is over-laid correctly because of the Commandant’s office building…it’s never moved. That was the foundation I used to line up the two maps. In the end, I went with a combination of the two-a cross between the footprint and what the map measurements were telling me.I made a effort to keep the building symmetrical, but I think my sides are a bit off. In an effort to get all of my wall to come together in some places were was some tweaking that needed to be done. I spent the most time on the drydock by far. I had a hell of a time constructing the roof. The image I’ve uploaded contains about the 5th try to get the building right. What I discovered in all of my efforts though is that the systematic approach to building is needed to by Sketch-Up work, and you have to be looking at the facade you are building head on, not from an angle. This project has definitely taught me how builders and architects think.As I was building the structures too I was also making decisions on how they should look based on the history of the community I chose. I also rethought my previous notions of this time period in the Navy Yard’s history and why the building like the drydock had the lifespan that they did. I feel like I can give a better idea of the maritime culture of the Anacostia River to our visitors because I now have a visual for what it looked like.

I’m a little frustrated with the historical reconstruction project due new week. I’d love to recreate the Washington Navy Yard, circa 1890 or 1925. Why those two time periods? The Naval Historical Center has some great photographs and paintings from both of those time periods and I’ve never had a chance to work with them. There were some really interesting building that lined the waterfront when the Navy Yard was actually in the business of ship construction (not to mention that the waterfront itself looked dramatically different, especially in the 19th century.) So, I’ve got photos and paintings from these two time periods, but no Sanborn maps. I can get a map for SE DC surrounding the Navy Yard, but none of the maps actually show a layout inside the Yards walls. I suppose it makes sense though. Military installations aren’t covered by ordinary fire insurance today, and they probably weren’t two years ago. The folks are Sanborn would have focused their maps on the surrounding residential areas, but the Navy would have covered the Yard itself.

I could do the reconstruction…most of the historians I work with agree that the central portion of the Yard’s layout hasn’t changed in about 130 years (minus the area immediately around the waterfront) so many of the streets would be easy enough to recreate. Even if I had the Sanborn footprint, I’d still be taking a guess with the placement of the building I’d be reconstructing as the roads they sit on no longer exist (all destroyed when river was filled in to make the parking lot in front of my museum in the late 30s.)

I could also go the safe route and just do Barrack’s Row 8th St. (not the Marine Corps Barracks though…no Sanborn footprint for its interior either.) But if allowed, I’d love to do Navy Yard waterfront…

Lots of fun in Google Sketch-Up this week. I started out trying to recreate some of the buildings at Chatham Historic Dockyard in England . I was there last fall and fell in love with the place. I quickly became sidetracked though with all the fun tools that Sketch-Up has to offer and ended up building two “dream homes” for myself. The only thing I had trouble with was ordering certain objects in my creations (like bringing the roof to the front of the screen so it didn’t look like the house was swallowing it.) Still more work to go, but lots of fun.

Still amazed by all the awesome maps that LOC’s Mapping and Geography Division holds. I was pleasantly surprised to find they had a number of recent maps from foreign countries, although they still don’t appear to have the specific maps I’m looking for. I’ll definitely be going back though…we just got a new digital camera at work that has all the bells and whistles and I can’t wait to use it in the map room.

I was thinking about the way the Sanborn maps classify the types of houses incorporated within them. When we do our reconstructions, we can texturize the buildings with the proper material (like metal or brick.) What about the buildings we’re unsure of though. I seem to recall that Ed, our host in the map room said most the building types were laid out in a map key, but occasionally he ran across some colors that were not defined. What’s the correct procedure when you are recreating a buildings off of something like a Sanborn map and you don’t know the original material used to build it. Do you guess, or do you just paint the building in Sketch-Up the same color as the building on the Sanborn and explain in the key.; It seems like kind of a silly question…my co-workers would say “who cares.” But the more I think about it, the more I realize how easily parts of the map could fall to “revisionist” history through Sketch-Up if not properly watched…

For my rubber sheeting assignment in History and Cartography (see previous post) I chose to look at Lexington Park, MD. I spend two days a week in this little community in St. Mary’s Country, Maryland as it’s the home of the Patuxent River Naval Air Museum, which I’m currently the Acting Director of. I hated going the Pax at first…I haven’t spent a large amount of time in “the country” since I left home to go to school (I grew up on a farm outside of Philly) and I wasn’t eager to return to the quieter life. I’ve wanted to be the Director of a Navy Museum for years though, and if Pax was my only chance, I knew I’d have to put up with the fact it was in “the sticks.”

One of the things that struck me right away when I arrived at the Museum on my first day was how intertwined it is with the base it sits next to, Naval Air Station Pax River. NAS Pax is home several large commands, but more significantly, it houses one of the oldest test pilot schools in the country and is currently the only naval aviation test facility on the eastern seaboard. Everyone (well practically everyone) that lives in St. Mary’s County is connect to the base. Either they or their spouses are in the military and stationed there, or they, or a spouse, is a civilian attached to one of the commands. 90% of the people I talk to in Lexington Park have had a relative or friend work at the base. Everyone knows about the Museum as it is entirely about the history of NAS Pax River and the people that work there.

As I spend more and more time in Pax, I’ve become more interested in how military bases effect the communities around them. I learn a new piece of history about the area every week I spend there, and it seems all the major events that have occurred in the past in this area of St. Mary’s County hinge on something that happened at the base. There was such an influx of military folks to the area in the later 1940’s that a railroad line was finally extended into the region to service the growing population. The country finally had to expand the main highway in the county about 8 years ago to account for the growing number of families moving into the area as the base expanded. This is all fascinating to me, probably because I didn’t grow up in a military community, or because none of the folks working at or stationed at the Washington Navy Yard (where I spend the other three days of my week) care all that much about the historic qualities of their workplace.

Through this week’s assignment I saw the way a tool like natural scene designer can give a new historical context to geographic area. I didn’t do anything too tricky for the assignment, I was mostly interested in grasping the fundamentals of the program, but now that I have there is no stopping the different aspects of history I can address by recreating a map. If I can find a GOTOPO from the 1940’s to use as an overlay, I’d be able to see how the expansion of the base has effected the area around it up to today. Comparing the different overlays provide a new way to look at the cause and effect relationship between the base and the town.

…was the line that kept going through my head this weekend as I did the rubber sheeting project. Nothing in Prof. P’s class is ever easy for me (well, Photoshop was kinda easy, but only because I’ve worked with that for a decade) so I threw myself into this project hoping it would only take me 15 hours to complete.

21/2 hours later, when I FINISHED the project I sat at the computer dumbfounded. No way could Natural Scene Designer be this easy. I found my DEM on USGS relatively easily (thank you Natural Scene Designer user guide) and imported it into NSD. I then proceeded to mess around with the feature. I flooded areas of the map that were bodies of water, added some trees and bushes, and even through in some hills. All good fun. In fact, I was babysitting all weekend and the little girls I was watching were fascinated with the tree maker…so I let then throw in a few themselves…hence the few random trees in random places on the map.

After having enough of the trees and bushes, I went in search of the overlay. Only issue of the whole project-finding the DRG to do the overlay with. NSD’s user guide makes some recommendations on where you can get DRGs or GOTOPOs, but I just got caught in the no-mans-land of USGS. I finally wound up on a site called MapMart, which claimed to be a partner with USGS. Now I’m not entirly sure that’s true, but I found the DRG Tiff I wanted, so I gave the site a whirl (and $15.00). I imported the overlay, and then came the shocked silence. Holy shit…it worked…the first time!

I did have a few additional little problems I need to continue working on though. I can’t get the elevation lines to go away, which was the main source of my frustration for a number of hours on Monday night. My resolution isn’t terrific either, and I’m not real sure where I went wrong with that. Possibly downloaded the wrong file??? NSD kept reccommending 24 K files, but you can’t believe everything you read. Regardless, by the end of Dancing with the Stars I felt like I got the basics, so I’m done with mapping tonight!

I’m back home…finally! After a grueling week and a half in San Diego (I know, I shouldn’t be complaining…it was beautiful and sunny the entire time I was there) I made it back at about 3 am this morning an extension of what was only a week long conference to troubleshoot a problem at another museum and several flight delays. Ahhhh, the sweet smell of the Washington Navy Yard. Where I was able to steal Wifi connection in my travel, I dove into the Google Sketch up tutorials. Unfortunatly I only had my work labtops with me while I was away, so I haven’t had a chance to play, do I had a great time imagining the possiblities while at a Starbucks in the Denver Airport. The LOC site on Washington’s River Farm was really interesting. I love how they wove thelesson about the maps into the little blurbs next to the thumbnails. The only downfall of the map I thought…when you click on the larger image, the description doesn’t foloow to the page where you can zoom in and out. I found myself going back and forth between the pages to remind myself what I was looking at (short term memory) which got a bit old after awhile. I really wish the info had just followed…

As I’m sure many have seen, WordPress was not being cooperative last week when I tried to upload my assignment on the hand-drawn map…I didn’t have the ability to upload more then one picture to my post…really frustrating, as I know I’ve been able to do this before. Has anyone else found that depending on the brower they use their formatting options for their posts change??? Anyway, wordpress seems to want to play again, so I’m going to try and fix the issue today not that I’m no longer on the move!

The Illustrator Map that I created for this assignment was done from Commodore Joshua Barney’s map of the battle of St. Leonard’s Creek during the War of 1812. As you can see from the original, there’s more to the map. As I spent 15 hours working on just the portion you see though, I decided against tackling anything further. This map has great hand-drawn/hand-written qualities that I worked to preserve in a digital format. I couldn’t find a font exactly like Barney’s so I chose something close to a 200-year-old formal script.

The hand drawn map is a scaled up (double the original) map of an officer’s birth on a turn of the century cargo hold. I used this particular map to practice for my final project where I’d like to map HMS Belfast’s interior as she looked in her last year of combat service and as they look as a Museum today. I’m fascinated by that way that ships can be transformed from vehicles of combat to educational facilities for the general public. HMS Belfast is one of the best examples of this genesis.

Abode Illustrator is a good lesson in humility. The Illustrator map that I’m attaching to this blog looks like a kindergartener did it, which is incredibly frustration as I spent hours working on it and tweaking my outlines. I’m at a conference in San Diego right now, which is actually the best thing that could have happened to me with regards to this project. I’m so caught up in running this conference that I just can’t spend any more time working on this map. Couple of things that I’ve learned and Illustrator that I did want to list in this blog though (before I run off to my “opening day reception”)
-Put the different aspects of your map project in different layers…just as you would in Photoshop. I also learned (the hard way) that just because a layer or property is highlighted, doesn’t mean it’s “active.” You have to click the on/off button to activate the layer
-Text will rotate, but not the way you rotate in Photoshop. At one point in this project I thought I’d cheat and save my Illustrator map as a PSD and import into Photoshop to get the test to rotate and skew the way I wanted. I thought better of that though, but would like to discuss how to work out the problem in class next week.